Maybe I'm Getting The Hang of This

It's going on six months, but I think I'm starting to get a groove going.
Took me long enough. Now if only my circadian rhythm weren't so broken....

One of the unfortunate side-effects of living on the west coast and having
a primarily east-coast social network is that I have trouble finding people
who are awake and online during my non-work hours. While I have little
control over when I leave the office, I
tend to have a fair amount of control over when I go in. As a result, I've
been staying up later, to claim a bit more time for myself. This, combined
with a minor nethack addiction and perhaps a bit too much caffeinated tea
has messed up my sleep schedule a bit. I'm too tired to do
anything useful, but too awake to sleep. I'd love to spend the time catching
up with some of the people I've been neglecting for the last six months, but
nobody is ever awake when I'm free. Bah, humbug. I'll probably end up with
more time to code, as a result, once my groove fully solidifies.

Randomness: 1080p is pretty--very very pretty. An awesome DVD player
manufacturer is based about 3 miles from where I live, so I didn't have
to pay shipping on my latest toy. Wizard People Dear Reader is really
funny, but really needs to be watched in a group setting for full effect.
Kirsten makes good cheesecake, and Dan makes good beef stroganoff.
I love my truck, even thought I stall it 2-3 times a day, the "Check Engine"
light goes on and off at random, and it smells a little funny. Ze Frank's
The Show continues to rock my world.

It's unfortunate that the times I feel the motivation to write blog
posts tend to be the times I'm least coherent. Good thing nobody reads
this crap. ;-)

You Never Miss It Till It's Gone

Bill Clinton on Fox News:
Perhaps the only Fox News segment I'll ever ask you to watch. It reminded
me of Jon Stewart
on CNN's Crossfire. It's the same sort of unscripted and
self-referential television that totally breaks our elaborate system of
one-directional meme delivery. You can't really tell people what to think
when someone on the screen is calling "Bullshit," can you?

Maybe I'm reading into it too much. But boy do I miss having a president
capable of winning a debate and thinking on his feet.

Can you think of more instances of newsworthy deviations from television
scripts? Political / current events stuff, in particular. Kanye West's "George Bush doesn't care about black people"
is another perfect example. Send me links, videos, or ideas. I'd like to make
a compilation disc, for posterity's sake. Or maybe just for laughs. But
it would still be cool.

Feeling Antsy

I'm feeling a bit stifled, lately. Insufficient outlets for my creative nature.
Everything that I want to play with requires more spare time and energy
than I seem able to find. I miss building things. I find this sadly
ironic, and I suspect a few friends are thinking "I told you so."
I've been sleeping too much, and poorly,
which I attribute largely to Kirsten's 4:30AM alarm that goes off each
morning. I'm sure this doesn't help matters.

I've certainly made a few project attempts, but they've all kinda fizzled.
I took a quick look
at Loudmouth recently
for writing a Jabber bot, but I seem to be incapable of getting it to talk
to Google Talk, which is pretty much the only Jabber server I care about.
Some months ago, I wrote some VCard parsing code in Perl to help me get
my address book off of my Mac and into evite for wedding party invitations.
I got it far enough to suit my personal needs, but not far enough to be
worth releasing to anyone else. Once the itch was scratched, I put it
down, and didn't look back. Nethack was a nice diversion for a weekend
or two, but it's just a game, not a project.

A coworker taught me to drive a truck with a manual transmission last Friday.
(He's trying to get rid of the truck, and I mentioned that I needed a second
vehicle.) Learning to drive stick was quite the experience. Of all the
nervewracking things I've done recently (and I've done a few), I think that was
one of the most fun, in a totally juvenile
sort of way. I'm still not good at it, but I might buy his old pickup anyway.
I miss having a second vehicle, I'd like to have a crap-hauler (hatchback
or pickup), and it's just fun to operate a vehicle that requires so much
manual intervention. (Stalling if you don't hit the clutch when fully braking,
etc..) Maybe I'm just warped. It's a fun sort of novelty which appeals to
me, right now.

In completely unrelated news, two of our friends treated us to a lunch at
a fancy French restaurant named Bouchon in Napa Valley as a wedding gift,
last weekend. The food and the experience were both excellent. Probably the
coolest trip we've taken since moving to the West Coast. They want to make
a trip to the French Laundry sometime this winter, and I suspect we will
probably join them. Maybe I'll end up a yuppie after all....